California Homicides Up Nearly 20 Percent in Just Two Years

Dec 24, 2018

By: Teresa Mull

Despite having some of the strictest gun regulations in the nation, California’s homicide rate increased 18 percent between 2014 and 2016. This information was revealed in a bill filed by a Democratic Assemblyman calling for – wait for it – more gun control.

Breitbart.com reports:

California has universal background checks, gun registration requirements, red flag laws (i.e., Gun Violence Restraining Orders), a ten-day waiting period for gun purchases, an “assault weapons” ban, a one-gun-per-month limit on handgun purchases, a minimum firearm purchase age of 21, a ban on campus carry, a “good cause” restriction for concealed carry permit issuance, and controls on the purchase of ammunition. The ammunition controls limit law-abiding Californians to buying ammunition from state-approved vendors–all of whom are in-state sellers–and adds a fee to any ammunition bought online, also requiring that ammunition to be shipped to a state-approved vendor for pickup.

The language of the bill filed in December 2018 reads:

(a) Although California has the toughest gun laws in the nation, more effort is necessary to curtail gun violence. The Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation found that from 2014 to 2016 gun homicides increased 18 percent. Therefore California needs to bolster violence prevention initiatives so that they are commensurate with the state’s gun laws and the violence prevention programs of other states.

(b) It is the intent of the Legislature to enact legislation to impose an excise tax on the sale of handguns and semiautomatic rifles and to require the revenue generated by that tax to be used to fund grants through the California Violence Intervention and Prevention Grant Program (CalVIP) program which support local and community-based violence intervention and prevention efforts.

In other words, gun control has the opposite of its intended effect. California’s gun control laws are increasing the state’s residents’ chances of death.

“California proves, in a sad and tragic way, what we already know: that gun control doesn’t work. It does the opposite of its intended effect – leaving innocent, law-abiding Americans less capable of defending themselves,” Dudley Brown, president of the National Association for Gun Rights, told Gunpowder Magazine. “Gun control makes people, in essence, sitting ducks, and provides criminals an easy target. With shocking statistics like these constantly showing the morbid reality of gun control, it’s clear the anti-gun establishment does not have the safety of the citizenry in mind when it passes increasingly strict gun control laws. Power and control are their sole concerns, and more people are dying because of it.”